


The Caves and the Darkness

by Trobadora



Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Angst, Book: The Valley of Fear, Friendship, Gen, POV First Person, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28299789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: I have a letter in a dispatch-box at the bank: Rache's own, explaining his deeds and his reasons. My friend told me to burn it. I kept it, and I cannot forget."Seditionary nonsense," said my friend.
Relationships: Sebastian Moran & James Moriarty
Comments: 12
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Caves and the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mikkary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkary/gifts).



"Nonsense," says my friend, contemplatively. It has been his favourite word since we arrived at Birlstone. "I do believe, dear Major, that Inspector MacDonald was correct in that estimation. _All_ the theories regarding this case are so improbable and nonsensical as to be not worthy of consideration."

"Including your own?" I ask.

There are whispers of sedition, of conspiracy, allusions to things whose name people dare not speak. Yet even powers greater than ours cannot explain the events of the killing. 

"Mine as well," my friend admitted, eyebrows drawing together, his head swaying back and forth. "The improbable must be considered true if all alternatives have been considered, but in this case, I judge it vastly more probable that there is an explanation we have simply not discovered yet." He fixed his eyes upon the dinner table and proclaimed, in the tone of a sullen child, "I am, in short, thoroughly tired of this nonsense."

 _Nonsense_ again. I am hearing echoes.

I have been uneasy since I saw the report Inspector MacDonald brought to my friend. It is a horror, the likes of which I would have been pleased never to encounter again. 

And the scene of the crime itself - it would have been horrific had the blood been red, had the dead man been fully human. A shotgun charge to the face had blown this man Douglas's head almost to pieces. I have seen outrageous deaths, though I don't much care to see them again. That same scene, however, with the blood all _green_ ... it turns my stomach. It brings up memories. Deep caverns.

Afghanistan has been on my mind. Too, Franz Drago's murder has been on my mind, and everything that followed. I cannot shake it. The shadow hanging over the manor house at Birlstone feels too familiar. 

I remember the oppressive air in those Afghan caves, the glittering _Thing_ that rose from the Deep – and I remember Victoria Gloriana, our own Queen, who is not so different from that Thing, no matter that they call it a savage and her a Great Crowned One.

I remember, and I cannot breathe.

I haven't the words to say how I feel. No doubt my friend could describe it - no doubt he can see it on my face. 

I stood very still in the room where the blood was - where the body was. I struggled. Am struggling still. My friend is kind and allows this to pass without comment. 

I identified the gun for him. I know guns, and gun manufacturers. I've never fired a sawed-off shotgun, but I know the damage birdshot can do, at far greater distances.

The dead man had royal blood only by the drop. But theirs is stronger than ours, in this respect- his blood was green. They are stronger in all respects. I know.

Can I fault Mrs Douglas for not being grieved to lose such a husband? Can I wish his murderer caught?

My friend has not yet captured the one who called himself _Rache_ , the one who planned Franz Drago's death, but he is on his trail. Can I wish for him to succeed?

And then again, how can I not?

****

"Nonsense," my friend says again. It echoes in my mind, in my memory. _Seditionary nonsense,_ I hear him saying, seven years ago.

I have a letter in a dispatch-box at the bank: Rache's own, explaining his deeds and his reasons. My friend told me to burn it. I kept it, and I cannot forget.

It's not true, what my friend said. Seditionary, yes, without question. Nonsense? I know better. And he must, too. Surely he must.

****

"Seditionary nonsense," said my friend. What else could I have done but keep quiet?

My friend has borrowed my umbrella, planning to spend a night at the location of the murder. I am glad he did not ask me to join.

I am glad to be alone here tonight, where he cannot see through me, cannot know my thoughts from my face. 

I looked away during dinner, yet I could not think away, still cannot. I cannot dismiss what I have seen. What rose from the deep in a cave in Afghanistan, and what sits on the throne of Albion - those above us, as they say, have left their terrible mark on my mind.

"And it is not the price we pay for peace and prosperity. It is too great a price for that," reads the letter. I know it by heart. Every word of it rings horribly true.

Even thinking that much is damning. Is treason. I know. 

I am no Restorationist, but I cannot regret that others are. I am, perhaps, a coward.

My hands are steady when firing a gun. They are empty now, and shaking.

I am not an analytical man. That is him, my friend; that is what he does - and my friend called it all nonsense, so what am I to do?

****

I asked my friend, just once, about the man who wrote the letter. My friend spoke of wild theories, inspired ideas - but he called them nonsense, too.

My friend is a rational man. If this is what he chose - to dismiss the letter and the man who wrote it, and the ones behind him as well - does that make it the rational choice?

I am not so rational as that. I wish to be loyal to him, to my friend, who has returned to me a purpose and a life. I know in my heart I am meant to follow him, wherever his path may lead. He said the same to me once - even he, who calls calls his mind a reasoning machine. I have found in him, in this man who strives to shed every distraction that might hinder the working of the complex instrument that is his brain - in him, of all people, of all places, I have found solace. A measure of peace. And still I cannot forget.

When the fire is crackling in the fireplace and my companion speaks of mathematics and mundane crime, when he brings to justice a bank robber or a man who murdered his stepdaughter, I am indeed at peace. But my friend continues to hunt those who hunt Them, and I -

I do not know what to do.

****

"Nonsense," my friend kept saying, all through this case. But his face was grave until today. Then he borrowed my umbrella and came back laughing.

"I am sure you will consider it nonsense as well," said he, "but I advise you to quit your work and make a holiday of it until tonight."

He sang the praises of some pamphlet about the long-past times the Queen herself resided within these halls, telling everyone to read it. The very memory it brings, of Victoria Gloriana herself - her voice, her awful presence, her touch - I cannot bear thinking of it, and I have not read the pamphlet, though he surely has his reasons.

She was kind to me, the Queen. She healed me. My once-withered shoulder is well and functioning, and I am once more a dead-shot, though what was once my pride is now touched by what I would forget, were such forgetting possible.

I have saved my friend's life with it, though. I could not have done otherwise. I owe the Queen eternal thanks for that alone. But I have not been sleeping well.

His eyes have been on me, these last few days, and I know how much they see. I wonder what he will do.

****

He is alive. Douglas is alive. It's the killer who is dead. Had someone suggested it yesterday - another of royal blood, at that scene - I would have thought it nonsense.

I misjudged his wife. Seeing her there - Mrs Douglas, at her husband's arm, smiling - I felt a chill run down my back, a touch of ice.

I remember Albert, the Prince, Victoria Gloriana's own Consort - remember meeting him, and how normal a man he seemed. I remember the terrible sanity of one who could consort with an Old One and be unaltered ...

This man Douglas is no Old One. A mere drop of royal blood - but that a drop is enough for me to sense his nature. I cannot be easy in his presence. Yet she can.

His blood is weak, and he hid himself in those passages once used to bring victims to the Queen. He faked his death, when such as he are feared and respected where they walk. (When his apparent death was enough for someone from the Palace to demand James Moriarty himself take up the case, and report to them his success. Failure, of course, is not an option.)

The one who came after Douglas, from that secret society where those with but a drop of royal blood made their own hierarchy of outlaws, rather than seeking the approval of those greater than them - _his_ death I cannot regret. 

My friend is pleased to have solved the mystery. I am not sure myself. The one who was killed, and the one who hid himself, they're both of the blood royal. Do I care if they kill each other? 

I do not know.

****

"Nonsense" rattles in my mind. 

My friend's company is no longer a solace. I have grown nervous, and my hands are shaking. I remember Afghanistan more than I have in years, and the memories mingle. 

The strange God there turns into Victoria herself before my eyes. 

Walls close in on me and turn into caverns.

Green blood splashes on walls in Baker Street, and it is from Moriarty's veins that it comes.

My friend solves petty human crimes and problems of national concern, and to him they are all one: the distraction of an hour, a break to the tedium of life. He is kind to women who have been poorly used, and stern with those who would seek to deceive him, and around us the world is - is -

What can I, what can any man do?

Moriarty has gone out, some case or other. I did not listen very well when he explained it, and eventually he went away.

He must know what is going through my mind. He has never failed to notice before. Has done it as a parlour trick, this breaking-in on another man's thoughts. 

He must know. If not before, then after Birlstone, he must know. How could I hope to keep the truth from him, who sees through men as others look through glass?

This morning he had a telegram signed 'Rache'. This morning, we heard that the man Douglas - Edwards, as he is truly called - was killed, after all. By his own secret-society enemies? Rache's message suggests not.

My friend says Rache used the man's enemies to dispose of him. Was he killed, then, for inhuman crimes? Or for the mere fact of his blood? I do not know.

I do not know if we did the right thing, solving this case. I do not know what I think. I do not know what I shall do.

****

"Seditionary nonsense," said my friend - and we were not alone then, so what else could he have done but dismiss the very notion of treasonous thought?

Even had we been alone: there can be no trust between men, not when it comes to such things. Not in this world we live in, not in times such as this. I cannot deceive myself otherwise, no matter how much I would like to.

I do not know what he truly thinks.

(They were all times such as this, my friend would say. Even before They came, there were always the betrayers and the betrayed.)

I want to trust him. I do.

But he said "nonsense", and I cannot trust myself.

****

I am sitting on my bed, an old letter in my hand. Written by a murderer, a traitor, a Restorationist.

This morning I have gone to my bank and brought back that old dispatch-box, the secrets I should never have kept. Not where someone might see. 

There are more of them every year. I've always put them in there, and tried to forget. I never could.

Seditionary nonsense, my friend called that letter. Yet we both know it is the truth. Seditionary, indeed, for that is what truth _is_ , in this our world.

Does it matter? Can it matter, when those above us are strong beyond our ken? A man like Douglas or Edwards, a man like Ted Baldwin may be killed. Franz Drago, even, may be killed. But when the Restorationists in Russia tried to tear down the Czar Unanswerable, they instead were torn to shreds. When in America a man shot He Who Presides, he rose again in a new and terrible face, as if from the Deep.

In the old stories from before the Rising, there is a saying when a human king dies: The King is dead. Long live the king. One dies, another one comes. But the Old Ones remain eternal.

There is still unrest in Russia, strife elsewhere, but They hold the world with an iron hand. What does it matter if They are not as we are told, the kind and generous givers of every progress man has made, every prosperity we possess?

My room feels oppressive as a cave, the air cold and damp and stifling. 

What does it matter? If Moriarty has decided it does not, who am I to say different? What good can it do to any soul, including my own?

The door opens.

I am sitting here, the condemning letter in my hand, my eyes unseeing. I do not flinch. I do not meet Moriarty's eyes. I say nothing.

He closes the door behind him. I look up: his face is stern. "One might call this suicide." 

I do not flinch. I do not disagree.

He comes over, picks the letter from my unresisting hands, looks down at it. His deep-set eyes give nothing away.

"I advised you to burn it," he says. "One might call this sedition."

I do not flinch.

"One might say," he continues, his eyes pinning me, "you mean to seduce me into a similar crime."

I swallow. I do not flinch.

Moriarty sits next to me. He holds out the letter. I grasp it, turn it over in my hands, set it down on my knees. Darkness is closing over me. I have no words. I can only hear his.

His hand closes over mine, and a jolt goes through me. "One might say a great many things, my dear major."

I stare. _My dear major_ , even now. _My dear._ It is only a phrase, but my heart stutters.

Moriarty smiles. His head is swaying as if to a private joke. "But of course," he adds lightly, "that is all nonsense, my friend." 

And I am not in an Afghan cave, nor in a room full of blood. I am safe.

I close my eyes, breathe out, and with my friend's hand holding mine, I finally, finally relax.


End file.
